"From Seeking to Seeing: A Miracle
for our Mess"

Easter SonRise Service - Apr.5, 2015 7:00
a.m. Jn.20:1-10

Does it sometimes
seem to you that the world is in a
mess? Easter coincides (in the northern hemisphere) with
spring's undoing of the mess winter leaves behind... the
brown dead grass, the rotting leaves we didn't get raked
last fall, the rubbish that has been blown around onto our
yards over the winter. Creation has been subjected to
frustration, it's "in bondage to decay" Paul tells us in
Romans 8(20f) - and it has been so since Adam & Eve
sinned in Eden. It seems mess is inescapable - and human
political / religious wrangling just makes things worse, as
is obvious right now in several countries in the Middle
East. Scientists have even come up with a law about
"mess", except they put a fancier handle on it - "entropy".
The second law of thermodynamics observes that the sum
of entropies of participating systems increases; that may
sound like a good thing until you realize it boils down to
increasing free or waste energy. Things don't get MORE
tidy and organized, they get MESSIER. But then you
already knew that from your bedroom floor! Not to
mention your vehicle, both its interior and its repair bills.

Spring undoes
winter's "mess"; Easter undoes man's
moral "mess", the cross of Jesus makes possible
forgiveness for our sins and moral failures. Wouldn't it be
neat if, at the heart of the gospel story, God's triumph over
sin and death at the resurrection, He planted a little miracle
that pointed specifically to this victory over our lives'
MESS? Listen closely!

John's account of
that momentous morning highlights
three ways the events pointed to proof of Jesus'
resurrection: SKEPTICISM; the SCENE; and
SCRIPTURE.

First -
SKEPTICISM. Mary Magdalene saw the stone
had been removed from the tomb's entrance. What was her
initial response? Did she exclaim in her soul, "Oh, my -
Jesus has been raised from the dead!" No! She assumed the
awful had become even worse - not only had Jesus died
and been buried, now somebody had come and been
mucking about with the body! V2 she ran to Peter and
John and said, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb,
and we don't know where they have put Him!" The big
mess of the healing Master getting crucified just got
messier. Now someone - nebulous "they" - is denying Him
even the dignity of a decent burial. Adding insult to injury
- or so it seems to Mary, who'd got up especially early,
before dark, to go with the other women to complete the
hasty burial rites from just before dusk on Friday, just
before the Sabbath began.

The resurrection
account, then, is NOT the product of
wishful thinking. Mary did not assume Jesus had been
raised. When the women went to tell the Eleven disciples
and the others they'd seen angels, Luke records in 24:11,
"But they did not believe the women, because their words
seemed to them like nonsense." The fishermen, former tax
collector, political zealot, and others were SKEPTICAL.
Thomas would even believe Jesus was raised after the
other disciples had seen Him! (John 20:25) Mark 16:14
notes that when Jesus appeared to the Eleven, "Later Jesus
appeared to the Eleven as they were eating; he rebuked
them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to
believe those who had seen him after he had risen." They
were all SKEPTICAL. Incidentally, the fact these accounts
weren't edited to make the first eyewitnesses look better -
less stubborn - is in itself additional argument for the
historicity of the accounts: they're true as-things-happened, not
tampered with or airbrushed to make Peter
and the others look better in retrospect. One could imagine
Peter and John sitting around a couple of decades later and
thinking, "Should we go back and edit some of those
accounts so we don't look so dumb? After all, He'd
already predicted while He was alive THREE TIMES He'd
rise from the dead! We should've seen it coming. We
seemed so daft... Such utter tools... Can't have that!
'Peter-a-tool...'" (!) But truth and humility won out, so we can be
sure the Easter account is historical, as it's the bedrock of
our faith.

There's
SKEPTICISM; this isn't just the product of
mass hallucination and wishful thinking. Next there's the
SCENE. The stone has been removed. That would have
been quite a job in itself - not only the massive weight, but
also the armed guard that had been posted, and Pilate's
seal that made tampering a serious offence (Mt 27:66). By
the way - did you know the stone wasn't removed to let
Jesus OUT but to let eyewitnesses IN? Think about it -
this glorified Saviour who can enter rooms with locked
doors had no need of a stone to be removed.

John & Peter
dash to the tomb after hearing Mary's
news. John bends over and sees the strips of linen lying
there but doesn't go in. Burly Peter arrives seconds later, a
little out of breath no doubt, but bravely pushes on into the
burial chamber. Vv6-7 tell us what he sees: "Then Simon
Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the
tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the
burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head.The cloth
was folded up by itself, separate from the linen."

Very strange.
What's gone on here? There's no body -
but the burial linens are lying exactly where they were. If
grave robbers had stolen the body, they would have taken
the linens and valuable spices along-with, for the sake of
time, ease of handling, and resale value. Even if they'd
taken the body and LEFT the linens (less likely), they
wouldn't have bothered to fold them all up again exactly as
they had been around the body. They would have strewn
them all over. This does not make sense. For once, there's
no MESS! Even the separate cloth or neckerchief that
covered the head was still in the same spot, slightly away
from the rest of the wrappings. The Greek phrase is
"still-in-the-folds".

Drawn by Peter's
bold example, timid John, the
author, finally enters the tomb as well, and sees just what
we've been talking about. The degree of orderliness and
un-mess is enough to convince John: it wasn't grave-robbers. The body
is indeed gone, but the wrappings are
untouched, in exactly the same arrangement of folding that
would not be possible unless the body had somehow
vapourized and just left them undisturbed in place. It's
enough for him! V8 notes, "He saw AND BELIEVED."
John is convinced of the reality of Jesus' resurrection even
before seeing Him, and the "many convincing proofs"
Jesus showed them over the following 40-day period.

So, there's the
SKEPTICISM; the SCENE, with its
totally weird MESS-LESS-NESS; and finally, there's the
SCRIPTURE. John adds in v9, "They still did not
understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the
dead." Note, had to: this had been predicted by Old
Testament prophecies. As Jesus travelling incognito said
later that day to two on the road to Emmaus, Lk 24:25f:
"How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all
that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Christ have to
suffer these things and then enter his glory?" As in, was it
not necessary, part of God's inevitable will and purpose?
And in Jesus' subsequent explanation of Moses and the
prophets, He doubtless would have included Psalm 16:10,
"...you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let
your Holy One see decay" - as Peter and Paul later did in
citing sources that predicted this event centuries in
advance (Ac 2:25ff; 13:35). This was all part of God's
orderly, wise plan - not a mistake, not a mess-up, but
exactly as foretold, part of the masterful saving design.

So, to wrap up -
unlike the cloths, which were
ALREADY wrapped up (ha!) - it may seem, as you're
listening to the news, that the world is in a mess. Or your
personal situation and relationships have foundered, your
health is deteriorating, you've made some wrong decisions,
your own life is in a mess. Coming to the tomb is the right
place to start: God specializes in undoing messes. Jesus
died so we could be forgiven, put right with God, receive
the Holy Spirit who can regenerate our soul and spirit so
we love and serve God and our neighbour instead of resist
and fight. Believe the Good News, and receive Him who
opened the tomb's door just so you could enter and see for
yourself - those orderly linens that point straight to a
miracle. Let's pray.